Articles by Jeff Pfeiffer

By Karl J. Paloucek There’s a long tradition of stories involving women feeling trapped by marriage and finding a way out. Gustave Flaubert created a scandal in the mid 19th century with Madame Bovary, telling of a woman’s adulterous affairs as a means of escaping her tedious marriage to a dull doctor. Kate Chopin’s The Awakening offered its heroine watery suicide as her only life-affirming option. But in this century, the story that has gripped the public imagination is Elizabeth Gilbert’s Eat Pray Love, the film adaptation of which premieres this month on Movies On Demand.

The most talked-about movie at the 2010 Sundance Film Festival, and the winner of the Teddy Award for Best Feature Film at the 2010 Berlin International Film Festival, The Kids Are All Right is directed by Lisa Cholodenko (High Art, Laurel Canyon) from an original screenplay that she wrote with Stuart Blumberg (Keeping the Faith). It’s a richly drawn portrait of a modern family. Nic and Jules (Annette Bening and Julianne Moore) are married and share a cozy suburban Southern California home with their teenage children, Joni and Laser (Mia Wasikowska and Josh Hutcherson). Nic and Jules – or, when […]

By Elaine Bergstrom Charlie St. Cloud, the story of a young man so overcome by grief and guilt over the tragic death of his kid brother that he retreats into a fantasy world where he believes he can still see him, is based on a novel by Ben Sherwood. Sherwood says the inspiration for his book came from two sources, “First, the sudden and unexpected loss of my father and the accompanying feelings of profound sadness and being frozen in place. … Second, the liberating, transformative power of love.”